Saturday, July 21, 2012

Boogeyman Gonna Get You

It was the copycat shootings she was afraid of. I had Friday off and we had all planned to go to the movies. Then the Aurora shooting happened. My daughter’s mother freaked my daughter out suggesting there would be copycat killings and it was the worst day to go to the movies. Fear comes in a number of forms. It comes in the logical kind that happens when a car swerves into your lane. Then there is the illogical ‘boogeyman gonna get you’ type of fear.

We live in a culture permeated by fear in general. Much of it is the boogeyman type fear. Parents that don’t let their children walk anyplace because someone will snatch them up. People that lock their door at all times lest a home invasion occurs taking life or maybe taking body to Mars. Fears based in fact but fears that can overwhelm.

Perhaps I dislike it so because I was an anxious little kid. Grownups scared me, police scared me, girls scared me... I refuse to live in fear at this point. Ultimately people fear death from some unnatural occurrence. Yet as I often tell my daughter you can die by swallowing a piece of bacon wrong while in your own kitchen.

There must be some healthy way to measure whether the fear is valid. Is it a fear that overtakes your life and holds you hostage in itself. It seems that is the measure for me. Am I able to embrace life more fully by entering into this activity though I have a level of fear? Let’s say I want to go ride ATVs for a weekend but I have heard stories of people becoming paraplegic after ATV accidents. Do I hide from it or embrace it. I take precautions and embrace it. (The author would at this point like to admit to an irrational fear of heights which however has not kept him from climbing Mt. Whitney nor trying rappelling.)

Culture screams at us to avoid life, yay, to avoid coming alive. We do significant disservice to ourselves and our Creator when we hide from opportunity and living. That is what I am most afraid of.